Don't get up in my undercarriage

 

I have an ongoing quest to lighten my load. To that end, I have offloaded more kitchen stuff to my housemate. This trailer easily absorbed a microwave, a rice cooker, and a toaster oven. I brought the microwave from Portland. It was Mom's microwave, the one she had at the Cottage. It's got two dials and it dings. The rice cooker and the toaster oven I bought when I moved into the Bat Cave. I don't know why I thought I would suddenly start eating rice and toast. Probably for the same reason I thought I'd buy orange slacks and flowered shirts, now that I'm in the desert. As if moving would make me a different person. Nope. I still eat nuts and twigs. I still wear grungy pajamas. I've regressed to my personal mean. There's no budging me now.

I have a short stack of cardboard boxes ready to offload to the thrift store next week. I can't believe I'm still downsizing. On this round, I'm jettisoning some coffee cups. I only need one. I'm letting go of a clear glass dish good for baking banana bread, or meatloaf, if you are so inclined. I think it might have been Mom's. My old beat-up $20 blender is going. My little waffle iron, so long. The coffee grinder. I'm not buying beans anymore. I'm now mixing Sprouts French roast with Yuban. It's just a matter of time before I'm stirring instant coffee with a plastic spoon. 

I doubt I will miss any of it. If I haven't used the stuff in a year, it's unlikely I ever will. Besides the kitchen gear, I boxed up a couple desk lamps I bought when I moved here, when all my stuff was still in storage and I needed to have light in the Trailer. I'm letting go of my light therapy box. Brain fog is the least of my worries given my affliction with vertigo or whatever it is. The ENT doesn't think it is vertigo. It might have been at one time, but untreated, now it's disequilibrium stemming from vestibular migraines. She made up the diagnosis based on what is popular in the medical literature, I'm pretty sure. Vestibular migraines is all the range right now. Who cares? If it can't be measured, it's not really happening. Just stick a fork in it and call it done. 

I'm in a downsizing contest with myself, it seems. How little do I need to live? I remember reading about that guy who has all his possessions in a backpack, something like forty items. He showed a photo of them all spread out on a small picnic blanket. What he didn't talk much about is how he relied on the generosity of others in order to live. He could afford to mosey around without the basic accoutrements of American life because he was borrowing the accoutrements of others. 

What are the basic accoutrements? A bed, I suppose, or something to sleep on. I didn't see a bedroll or sleeping bag, so he must have been sleeping on other people's beds. Did he have a way to store and cook food? He had a dish and a spoon. That seemed overly optimistic. I didn't see a method to keep clean, a mechanism to handle waste. He had his feet for moving from here to there, but I seem to recall people gave him rides. You can get rides when you are a social media celebrity. And beds. And cooked food. I want to be a minimalist, not a moocher.

Did that guy feel as if he had a place to be? Was that one of his basic accoutrements? 

I guess that is the part I still find confounding, that place-to-be thing. Where does a person go when they have no place to go? My worst fear used to be that I would end up living in my parent's basement. Oh, how naïve. At that time, they had a very nice basement. I've lived in basements, they aren't so bad. I'd live in a basement now, here in Tucson, if anyone had such a thing, which they don't, because the entire city rests on top of caliche, which is cement, in case you didn't know (I didn't). Not many basements here. Or lawns, either. This is such a weird place. The sunsets are amazing, though.

With climate change shaking up the globe, it might make sense to be a nomad, if I can still buy food, water, and gasoline. No guarantees on any of that, but what is my alternative? I can't afford to buy a home, I can't afford to rent an apartment. When the next viral pandemic arrives and turns us all into mindless zombies, I guess I'll just go with the crowd. Why fight it? I might be able to outrun the plague if I'm mobile, assuming my car still runs and there's still electricity for pumping gas. Well, if it isn't the virus that takes me down, it will be a fire or a flood. Or maybe an old-fashioned boring car crash. They have a lot of those here in Tucson. 

I don't have a lot of years left in me, so I don't expect my suffering to last long. Besides, suffering is optional. So they say. 

Saddled with the job

Google is so funny. Whenever I log into this blog, it sends me alerts to tell me that I'm signing into my account from a new device. As if to warn me I might be having an out-of-body experience. I'm sure it makes sense to Google. My confusion is near-constant when it comes to the Internet. I've had to abandon several Gmail accounts because I couldn't remember the password, and even though there are other ways to verify my identity, Google has decided it just can't take a chance. After I give up, it sends me an email to my "verification" email stating that it just protected me from an unauthorized log in. As if it expects a pat on the head. For protecting me from myself. Hmmm. Maybe that makes sense after all.

Everything is back to normal at the Love Shack, that is to say, all effed up in the usual way, moving along according to the moving plan. The kitchen table and chairs departed this week with a grateful Freecycler. I still don't know how she managed to fit all three pieces into her little SUV. Maybe those things are roomier than they appear. I have one more shelf to donate to the local reclaim store. After that, there's just the bed. The question I'm now facing: at what point does one let go of one's bed? I still haven't shaken off the residual trauma left from two days of no heat. The thought of discarding my bed is fraught.

Nevertheless, I'm starting to get a sense of the rhythm of letting go. I thought at first the best strategy would be to hang onto the small stuff to the end. However, I've discovered all the small stuff takes a long time to unscrew and dismantle and pack up and discard. The big stuff leaves an obvious vacancy in the space near the front door—visible and therefore impressive. The small stuff, though—I'm talking about the knicky-knacky things, the shelves, the shower curtain (and rings), the mirrors, the plants, and the pots on the back porch, and the car gear in the basement—all that stuff takes up a lot of emotional space. The best strategy, no debate, is to tackle the small stuff while you are waiting for Freecyclers to venture out in the rain and snow to pick up the big stuff. 

Therefore, my downsizing victory today was removing the shower rings from the shower curtain rod. It was more difficult than I expected. I already packed the curtain. I never take showers because of the vertigo. 

My other victory today was enduring a Zoom meeting with my siblings without losing my serenity. Our mission was brief: to state aloud that we were all in agreement that we are going to hire the probate lawyer and to make a list of questions I am to ask her next week. I am not sure how I ended up the the facilitator of this endeavor, considering I am not the executor named in the will. Somewhere over the past five years, I volunteered to be Mom's personal rep, and even though now she's dead and doesn't need me anymore, I'm still it.  

The reward for being of service is the opportunity to do more service. It's easier for everyone if there is a control freak in the bunch, one person to step up and take the reins while the others enjoy the relief of not being saddled with the job. Did I just mangle some metaphors? Who is wearing the saddle in this case? I guess it is me. Well, get on up and hold on tight, kidlets. You asked for it. Away we go. Yee-haw.